


an oath that tastes like treachery

by Canonymous



Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Confrontations, Dialogue Heavy, Gen, Not Beta Read, Sam | Awesamdude-Centric, Toby Smith | Tubbo-centric, Warden Sam | Awesamdude, based on 2/23 stream, sam stans come get yalls warden juice, uhh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-24
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-14 21:54:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29673810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Canonymous/pseuds/Canonymous
Summary: It’s the middle of a grey afternoon, and Sam stands next to a crudely constructed sandstone dick atop the roof of the most secure building in the entire world.(or: a oneshot based on Tubbo’s stream that doubles as Sam the Warden character study!)
Relationships: Sam | Awesamdude & Toby Smith | Tubbo
Comments: 23
Kudos: 79





	an oath that tastes like treachery

**Author's Note:**

> hello! this fic is sort of an odd one. for those of you who don’t know tubbo on his stream today (2/23) went to the prison and built a sandstone dick on it and for whatever reason my little mcyt brain went we could make an angsty oneshot out of this!! 
> 
> warnings for canon typical discussion of violence and death, references to manipulation, there is for a few lines an unconscious character... i think that’s it but let me know if i missed anything!
> 
> note: this also contains spoilers up to current dream smp lore but you don’t necessarily have have seen tubbo’s stream today to understand this ofc! just a warning if you aren’t up to date on what’s going on with the prison right now.

It’s the middle of a grey afternoon, and Sam stands next to a crudely constructed sandstone dick atop the roof of the most secure building in the entire world.

“Got a problem?” Tubbo questions cheekily, voice just a touch too scratchy, smile just a little too sharp. He hasn’t bothered to hide the fact he’s the one who built it in any way—in fact, he keeps cycling through his materials to deliberately show off the rest of the sandstone in his possession. “I’m not trying to break anything. I just don’t see the issue, big man.”

Sam wants to understand what could possess someone to do something so unbelievably stupid. Truly, actually; in his spare time, he’s doing his best these days to understand what trauma does to make people more likely to lash out and how everyone’s experiences factor into what they do. But he can’t quite come up with a reason someone would scale what’s objectively the most fortified structure in the area, suffer the effects of mining fatigue, and deliberately stick around long enough to get caught building… _this._

“Did Foolish put you up to this?” he guesses. He’d been there when Sam arrived, helping Tubbo keep the sandstone symbol intact as Antfrost tried to shoo them away, but he’d let the cat escort him out without too much complaint. Nothing like how Tubbo dug his heels in and insisted they talk even more about the stunt.

“No,” Tubbo answers, a flicker of worry crossing his features before being buried beneath the carefree attitude he’s wielding like a weapon right now. “Foolish didn’t even help, this was—really, it was all me. I thought it’d be funny. And rude.”

“And worth risking getting in trouble for?” he wonders, throwing his hands up in exasperation. Tubbo almost seems to _perk up_ at his words, though it’s quickly masked once more. There’s something there he needs to dig at that he just can’t quite put his finger on.

“I… assume this is about Tommy, somehow,” Sam ventures. 

Tubbo’s smile twitches. “Not everything is about Tommy, you know. You’ll inflate his ego talking like that, best you don’t—“

“So it’s not about Tommy?”

He shrugs. Sam sort of wants to scream, so he channels that frustration into hacking away at the sculpture instead—limbs slow and heavy with the mining fatigue, stuttering to a stop when Tubbo jams his way between his pick and the sandstone with reckless abandon. He pinches the bridge of his nose. 

He’s not actively breaking blocks to free either of the inmates. _This is—what possibly could this be, if not an attempt at a breakout?_ Something so stupid it almost legitimately makes Sam think it’s some genius play at freeing someone inside, something blatantly against enough implied rules if it were anyone else, done any differently, he might consider locking them up for safety, too.

“Tubbo—you know how serious I am about this! You’ve got to cut it out, okay? It’s like—like you _want_ to get locked in prison!” he blurts, the rest of his train of thought escaping him, aloud.

And his heart _drops_ , because as he says that, something in Tubbo’s face shifts and tightens and it suddenly makes too much sense.

His mouth goes dry, realization dawning on him. Of course. He obviously can’t break his friend out of the inescapable prison, can’t create a way out—he’s trying to cause enough trouble to get a way _in._ “Tubbo..” 

Ruse ruined by Sam’s moment of realization, Tubbo stops with the trickster angle and goes straight past to pissed off. His expression twists into a scowl and he crosses his arms. “ _Don’t_ ,” he snarls, abruptly, the flash of teeth around the word reminiscent of all the times he’s seen Tommy shout something similar. The whole of his anger, actually, reminiscent of Tommy. 

“You really want to be put in there with Dream, too?” he asks, dragging a hand down his face. Tubbo’s shoulders bunch up defensively as he goes to answer, gaze snapping back up to Sam.

“Of course I don’t,” he hisses, uncrossing his arms to clench his hands into fists at his sides, “But neither does Tommy, and, well, you already screwed that up for him, didn’t you?”

He blanches. “I didn’t—it’s a security measure, Tubbo, come on,” he hastens to clarify, a hysterical bubble of panic expanding in his chest at the veiled accusation, “He’ll be out by the end of the week. Less than seven days left—“

Tubbo cuts him off with a harsh laugh, grating on his ears. He can’t remember a time Tubbo sounded quite like that, not to him. “Oh, oh, should I be _thanking you_ , then, big man? He’s only trapped in a cell with the guy that’s obsessed with him for a week! My sincerest thanks, oh great Warden!”

“Would you rather Dream break out?” Sam demands, feeling the beginnings of a stress headache starting behind his eyes as Tubbo scoffs.

“I’d _rather_ you let me in there,” he answers, near instant, as if it makes perfect sense. He groans in dismay at the response, at the straight-faced demand to let him be trapped in another box with _Dream_ of all people. It’s bad enough Tommy wound up in there—if Sam can mitigate this damage, make sure the same thing doesn’t happen to anyone else, that’s the closest he can get to a victory in this scenario. 

“He’s not the fucking bogeyman,” Tubbo adds, scuffing his shoe on obsidian beneath it. Something bordering on hysterical is seeping into his words as they tumble out of his mouth, his Tommy-like tough guy act crumpling in the silence between them. “He’s not going to magically poof his way out and into his armor, get all his stuff back, if you just let Tommy _go._ I—I made sure of it, I’m _wearing_ his armor, Sam! Logically speaking, not even Dream can whip up an escape route out of your maxed out prison with, with guards and watchtowers and _secrets,_ in the two minutes it would take to get him back..!”

And Sam knows that. He does; Sam knows that for all his pompous, flashy tricks and acts and baits, Dream is just a _person,_ and a person locked in a cell that he, himself, green lit as inescapable. But there’s this paranoid little ball that’s been lodged in the center of his chest ever since keeping Dream behind bars fell to Sam’s jurisdiction. This… certainty, that if Dream ever, _ever_ gets out of the prison of Sam’s design, it’s all on him.

They trust Sam to keep the agent of chaos, decommissioned, in his orderly containment. It’s the most terrifying task he’s ever been saddled with.

And it’s fucked, to look Tubbo in the face with his too-wide, desperate eyes, and know that this whole security measure is, at its heart, for the sake of Sam’s case of debilitating paranoia. In all likelihood to ensure he can sleep at night after the Warden armor comes off, to make damn sure he can look anyone in the face when they ask if Dream’s escape is possible and give them the answer he knows to be true.

( _He remembers Tommy coming to him with the very same look on his face as Tubbo wears now, actually, all shaking limbs and droopy posture from adrenaline long since spent. He’d been surprised he was still awake, much less still out all the way at Sam’s base._

_“You’re sure,” he’d asked, through chattering teeth, forgoing a greeting of any kind. “You’re sure he can never get back out?”_

_He hadn’t hesitated._

“ _I’m_ certain.”

_And it hadn’t reassured him entirely, of course, not until Sam explained every mechanism as much as he could without risking its security, not until Sam had sworn he’d kill and die to make sure it stayed that way. But his shoulders had loosened just a bit at the unwavering conviction in Sam’s voice that day, and he will never compromise that surety for any one person.)_

The truth of it is this: Sam would send the entire facility into lockdown if it meant that slim chance, that tiny fraction of a decimal of a _snowball’s chance in the Nether_ , was brought back down to zero. Regardless of whatever poor soul was trapped in there, no matter if it ends in bloodshed on either part. If he wasn’t that ready to do whatever it took, he’d never be able to look all of them in the eye and say that. _I’m certain._

“I would kill you,” he tells Tubbo, suddenly, because he needs him to understand that. “Before letting you into the prison for any reason during this lockdown. I would kill you, first.”

There’s no shock to his expression. If anything, he looks marginally more exhausted at the promise. Sam thinks Tubbo’s been on the other end of a blade enough to think anyone capable of it is bound to threaten it, eventually; he’d love to point out the flaws in that and explain the nature of trust, or to be able to promise not to hurt him, to kill him. But he can’t do that and at the same time swear to do anything to keep Dream put away.

Tubbo can have other friends. There are others who know the meaning of love and companionship and believing in each other’s capacity to do no harm. But there is no one else who would go to the lengths Sam has sworn himself to for this job. 

There is only one Warden.

Tubbo’s fatigue wars with the anguish written in the depths of his eyes for a moment before he seems to make a snap decision to attack—his fingers twitch in an all too telling way before clasping around the hilt on his diamond sword. Sam allows himself one soft sigh before meeting him blade for blade, and he does his best not to hurt him too badly as he knocks him out cold. 

He waits next to his unconscious form, a speck of color on the seemingly endless black roof, until Antfrost returns. He sends the guard to Snowchester with Tubbo in tow, and a note to leave for him when he wakes—

_Six more days. Remember what I said, okay? Just focus on being ready to meet him when he’s out. In the meantime: please no more rooftop misadventures._

**Author's Note:**

> and that is it! let me know if you liked it at all in the comments (especially if you’re a fan of sam who i also love and spent a lot of time working out moral guidelines for??) or leave a kudos if that’s more your style!! i know this was a quick oneshot especially compared to my other dsmp oneshot (more techno and tubbo centric, you can find it on my account if you’re interested!!) but i have a lot of other dsmp stuff in the works ! hope to be posting again soon <3


End file.
